Inktober 2021, The Scarbots, Week One

I introduced the Scarbots a bit last time, and have since produced a couple more of them. I’ll save today’s for next time, but these two get to join their brethren to finish up Week One of Inktober 2021. I had a little more time on these, so I managed to finish up the inkwork. I do clean them up a bit before coloring them, so that’ll wait, but for now, that’s 7 new Scarbots in the sketchbook for the year!

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Inktober 2021, The Scarbots, Days 1-5

Inktober is an annual art project, intended to get people in the habit of drawing a bit with ink every day. I’ve never really had time to fully commit to such a thing, but I’ve been trying to do a bit of ink drawing each day this October. I’ve only “finished” one of these, and I suspect I’ll go back and do more with each of them at some point, like I did with this, the first Scarbot I ever produced (there’s another over on my Artstation page):

The Scarbots are a remnant of a forgotten war in an alternate Earth history’s northern Europe. They are part of the Project Khopesh storyline that I work on when I can make the time. They are expert scavengers, repairing themselves and each other as often as they need in the Northscar badlands. No two are the same, and though they are expert mechanics and very skilled in improvisation, they aren’t all that intelligent outside of their mission expertise and maintenance.

This new batch of Scarbots are certainly rougher, but these are the raw scans, straight from my sketchbook. I did some pencil work first, then inked in with a simple Uni-ball Onyx Micro ballpoint pen. If nothing else, I’ll have a new herd of Scarbots to play with at the end of the month. It will be fun to “flesh” these out, as it were, one of these days.

Thanks for stopping by, and we’ll see what else I can come up with!

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Trouble on the Tracks: Tinker Bits IV

Hello everyone!

Yes, it’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, but that’s just how life goes sometimes.  This time, as last time, it’s to announce a new Kickstarter campaign we’re running, this time for some steampunk train-themed tabletop game bits.

Trouble on the Tracks: Tinker Bits IV

There are a bunch of photos of the prototypes over here, too:

Project Khopesh on Pinterest, Tinker Train Bits

Please spread the word!  Promotional algorithms on social media sites aren’t kind to self-promotion, and many forums outright forbid it.  It’s hobbling crowdfunding a bit, and we greatly appreciate any boosted signal that you can offer, even if you don’t want to jump into the project yourself.

Thank you all!

Tesh

…and yes, there are still some “Steam backlog” mini reviews in the pipeline, I just need to make time to polish things up a bit.

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Dragon Aged

Yes, it’s been a while.  Yes, I have a lot of things I could and would like to write about.

For now, though, I’m short on time.  I wanted to show this design, though, for the Dragon Tinker Metal Meeple that I’d like to get made in a Kickstarter project later this year.  The “Dame”, “Fairy” and Top Hat” designs included for scale (the Top Hat gentleman is pretty standard meeple size, at 20mm tall or so, meaning this Dragon would be about 30mm tall, or 1 and 1/6″).  The Dragon has a normal mechanized Dragon side, and an “aged” side, to give it a bit of gravitas.  This also allows me to hint that it would be made of different metals, given that some parts don’t show the aging.

This is the last design I’ve had in mind for now, though I certainly can come up with others, and there are some Carcassonne expansion meeples that I haven’t had time to work with yet.  They are less popular, though, and possibly less usable out of that game, so we’re sticking with more universal designs for the moment.  Like the Mad Scientist…

The Tinkerer…

and the Sky Pirate and Rocketeer…

Now, I really would like to get the Tinker Steampunk-flavored Carcassonne tile variant designs done.  They will take a bit more time, of course, and since I can’t really sell them, they will be a back burner “labor of love” sort of thing.

Then there’s the Pantheon Wars game, the Fudging Fates dice and this other game I’m designing, tentatively calling it Shattervale… there’s a lot to do.

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Tinker Steampunk Metal Meeples

Has it really been six months since I posted last?  Sorry about that, it’s been somewhat crazy around here.

I do have more Operation Backlog things to write about, and a bit to say about a recent sojourn in World of Warcraft that ended on a sour note, but for today, it’s a quick mention of a new Tinker project that we have up and running over on Kickstarter.  We’re going to get a bunch of these little guys made:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tishtoshtesh/tinker-bits-i-steampunk-metal-meeples

We’re funded already, thanks to some fantastic early adopters, so at this point, we’re just looking for as many people as we can to get these spread far and wide.  I would love to see these little guys all over the place, popping up in different games and locations, always making people happy to have them.

No, things like this aren’t necessities, but there’s just something fun about little bits of treasure like this.  If you’re interested, please check out the campaign, and maybe tell a few others about it.  The more the merrier!

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Steampunks and Scrapbooks

I’ve been looking for full time work since this Tinker business I’ve been experimenting with just isn’t paying the bills.  I applied to a graphic designer position with a scrapbooking company, and was politely informed that they cater to a “feminine” clientele and that my art isn’t what they are looking for.

OK, sure.  I could have made some great products for them, but to each their own.

I have to wonder, though.  With things like epbot.com, Forbes and IBM pegging steampunk as a Big Deal, and this sort of thing, with “steampunk” at least as important as “selfie” in dictionaries:

…it seems to me that steampunk design ethos, something I’m fairly familiar with these days, isn’t exactly “feminine”, but neither is it something below notice.

It’s not even strongly gendered in my experience, with steampunk fans quite happy to embrace things like Girl Genius or Hullabaloo not because of “token girls” but because of interesting and well crafted visuals and characters, some of whom happen to be female.  To be sure, there are those who take the Victorian fashion and buttoned-up morality as a sort of challenge, trying to find ways to make it pornographic (which doesn’t intersect largely with scrapbook patrons… I think… but I’m not researching it), but that’s just what the Internet does.  For the most part, what I’ve seen of the steampunk ethos and design is very inclusive and relatively nonjudgmental, which is part of the appeal of that “alternate history science fiction” sort of world where imagination is king.

I’m not a woman, but I’m married to a wonderful one, and she doesn’t see my steampunk work like the Tinker products and say “oh, that’s just so… masculine, ewwww”.  She appreciates it for its curious blend of precision and ramshackle weirdness.

So, I have to wonder what sort of market there is out there for steampunk designs that can be used in scrapbooking.  There’s certainly a “do it yourself” appeal to a lot of steampunk, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to prepackaged scrapbooking goods, and there’s always going to be those who heap disdain on any hint of the illiterate masses flirting with mainstream acceptance of their formerly fringe “geek safe zone” (see: “glue a gear on it“).  Even so, I instinctively think that dismissing steampunk might be a bit premature, and to consider it beneath the notice of “feminine” clientele is perhaps shortsighted.

To be fair, this company didn’t complain about steampunk explicitly, I’m just ruminating on their feedback.  I’m just not sure that “feminine” need equate to this sort of simple thing all the time.

What do you think?

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Black Nickel Gearpunk Dice Photos

This is just an addendum to the photo set of the Gearpunk dice.  We’ve ordered some in a black nickel finish, and though we don’t have all of them in stock yet thanks to a factory mistake, we have a few.  May as well show some beauty photos, right?

D6GearpunkBlackNickel

D8GearpunkBlackNickel

D12GearpunkBlackNickel

D20GearpunkBlackNickel

D20SpinGearpunkBlackNickel

DFudgeGearpunkBlackNickel

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Thinking Inking: Gearpunk Zinc D10 Decader

If you’ve perused the photo library of the Gearpunk dice, you might have noted that the Zinc-finished dice are rather shiny, especially when compared to the brass and copper variants.

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Decader Zinc

I’m partial to the antiqued look, both because I like the more rustic aesthetic, and because the antiquing makes the dice easier to read.  Since the factory managed to mangle our order’s quantities, we wound up with over 100 extra shiny Zinc D10 “decader” dice.  One of them seemed like the perfect test subject, then, to see what sort of simple inking options I might have.  I’ll be trying other experiments, but this is the initial test, which I’m pleased with.

I used Speedball “super black” India ink, water and a small hobby paintbrush.

Specifically, this ink:

Speedball Ink

And a brush a bit like the middle one here:

Small paintbrush

Though I picked up mine in a set of three at the local hobby store for $2.  It doesn’t need to be an expensive brush, just one that will hold a point when wet and is about 1/8″ in diameter or so.

I put eight drops of water and three drops of ink in a plastic cup for this experiment.  I diluted the ink to give myself a little time for the ink to dry.  When used straight, the ink dries fairly quickly, and I wanted a little wiggle room in case I messed up.  This experiment really doesn’t need a lot of ink, either.  I would have been fine with 1 drop of ink and 2 drops of water in retrospect, though it’s not a bad thing to have a bit more than necessary… and it’s not like a few drops really put much of a dent in my supply.  That’s the nice thing about this ink; it’s great to use, even when diluted.

I used the brush to pick up a bit of the ink, then gently applied it to the background behind the numbers on the die face.  The water tension naturally makes the ink settle into the recesses, though I did need to guide it around a little.  I added a little with a light touch to the other recesses in the design, and brushed lightly to help spread things around and get some ink in the smaller details around the edges and corners.

Since the ink does run a bit, I did only one face at a time, the one facing up and its edges.  Inking the adjacent faces would mean the ink would pool largely on the downhill side of the contours, and while I didn’t want a flat color, neither did I want it heavily lopsided.

Each face, then, took a few minutes to dry.  That’s not too bad, and if I were doing a set of dice, one face at a time per die, by the time I finished with the last die’s upright face, the first die could be ready to roll over and do the next face.  It’s best if you get each application dry before doing the next, so that timing might not work perfectly, but all in all, it wasn’t too much of a wait.

I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera handy to take photos while I was working, this project had to fit in some of my very constrained time last night and I wasn’t properly prepared.

Here are some photos of the finished die next to one of its unprocessed kin, in a variety of lighting situations (including one that’s just a color correction, taking the yellows out of an indoor photo).

I think it turned out well, much better than I had expected.  I’ll be doing more experiments when I can, but this was a good start, I think.

Thank you!

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Gearpunk Dice Arrival and Photos

It’s been quiet around here lately.  I’m still looking for work, and Unemployment is about exhausted.  So, I still don’t have the luxury of spending much time here, and I’m… significantly stressed. Still, this is worth noting.  The Gearpunk Dice that we’ve been waiting for since last year are finally here, so we’ll be shipping them out to everyone as soon as we can process them. Thank you for your interest and patience!

It’s worth noting that there are two photos of each single die.  This is to show them in different lighting and against different surfaces, in this case, black leather and aged painted concrete.

Gearpunk D4 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D4 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D4 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D4 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D4 Zinc

Gearpunk D4 Zinc

Gearpunk D6 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D6 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D46 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D6 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D6 Zinc

Gearpunk D6 Zinc

Gearpunk D8 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D8 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D8 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D8 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D8 Zinc

Gearpunk D8 Zinc

Gearpunk D10 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Zinc

Gearpunk D10 Zinc

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Decader Zinc

Gearpunk D10 Decader Zinc

Gearpunk D12 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D12 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D12 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D12 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D12 Zinc

Gearpunk D12 Zinc

Gearpunk D20 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D20 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D20 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D20 Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D20 Zinc

Gearpunk D20 Zinc

Gearpunk D20 Spindown Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D20 Spindown

Gearpunk D20 Spindown Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D20 Spindown Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D20 Spindown Zinc

Gearpunk D20 Spindown Zinc

Gearpunk DFudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk DFudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk DFudge Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk DFudge Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk DFudge Zinc

Gearpunk DFudge Zinc

Tinker D6 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Tinker D6 Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Tinker D6 Antiqued Copper

Tinker D6 Antiqued Copper

Tinker D6 Zinc

Tinker D6 Zinc

Tinker DFudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Tinker DFudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Tinker DFudge Antiqued Copper

Tinker DFudge Antiqued Copper

Tinker DFudge Zinc

Tinker DFudge Zinc

Tinker Pentagear Fudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Tinker Pentagear Fudge Antiqued Brass/Bronze

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Tinker Gearcoins Winding Down

There are just over 24 hours left on my latest Kickstarter project, the Tinker Gearcoins.  We started with 3 coins on offer and 7 moulds ready to go for stretch goals… and we’re up to 15 coins and a lapel pin (to make one of them a miniature astrolabe).  I might try to make another one purely as an Add On.

So… things have gone well.  Thank you all for your help, and if you’ve a moment, please spread the word!

The campaign is here:

Tinker Gearcoins Steampunk Game Coins

And some photos are over on Pinterest:

My photos of the prototypes

Professor Candy’s photos

Oh, and we have the Havok & Hijinks coins up for sale over on our storefront.  We made these as a part of a crossover with Ferrel‘s card game Kickstarter.  It’s a sweet little game, and the coins work well as dragon treasure.

Dragon Affinity Coin Set

We’ll have more stuff up on the store eventually.  Since I’m officially unemployed and jobs are scarce, I’m trying to scrape things together to try to make my own products work.

Thanks!

(And yes, I’ll have a non Kickstarter post up later this week.  I’ve had ideas, I’m just really busy with too many things.)

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